5 Ways to Make Your Internal Operations Omnichannel

Would you like to guess the efficiency of an internal omnichannel product team that's using no less than 27 different touchpoints, including multiple spreadsheets, emails, data uploads, etc., for one product alone? Not pretty, right?

Yet in many organizations, spreadsheets, siloed in various teams and departments, still rule the day. If information is siloed, then people are effectively siloed as well, weakening the chance of collaboration and essentially wasting a good portion of the combined knowledge base of your organization. Inefficient product management also leads to slower time to market and lost sales, which retailers really want to avoid.

We're selling in an omnichannel environment in which consumers want the latest product now, and products that closely match their desires. They also expect any channel they choose to shop in to have up-to-the-minute, accurate product information. It's easy to see the disconnect here between what consumers expect and how many internal teams are handling day-to-day product management tasks.

How can you move your omnichannel product management team into the 21st century so it can be agile enough to respond to fast-changing consumer demands? Here are five tips on improving your internal operations:

1. Unsilo the internal data: Conduct, if you will, a document audit of your product management teams. Besides the aforementioned 27 spreadsheets, obtain a clear picture of how much redundancy and waste in document creation is occurring. Then meet with your team members to create a plan for data consolidation.

2. One world, one goal: Look outside your internal teams and examine how you're communicating with your global supply chain. Evaluate how much communication is flowing now between supply chain members as well as between the supply chain and your internal team. Find out where the bottlenecks are, where the production cycle is being slowed down by miscommunication or slow communication, and consult with key supply chain members on how they think communication can be improved.